Notes

Napoleon functioned as an effective ruler of France beginning in
1799 and as Emperor 1804-1814; he also conquered and ruled over
much of Western and Central Europe.

Napoleon appointed many members of Bonaparte Of Corsican origin,
the Bonaparte (originally Buonaparte) family is the family of
Napoleon I, who was elected as first consul of France on
November 10, 1799 with the help of his brother, Lucien
Bonaparte, president of the Council of Five Hundred at
Saint-Cloud.

Napoleon I was crowned Emperor of France 1804-1814; the
Bonaparte family also provided kings of Spain, Naples, Holland
and Westphalia, and a second French Emperor, Napoleon III.

Napoléon Bonaparte Alternate meanings: See Napoleon
(disambiguation) Napoleon is the name of France's two emperors
of the Bonaparte dynasty:

Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821; reigned 1804-1814)
Napoleon III (Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, 1808-1873; reigned
1852-1870).
The title of Napoleon II of France was applied by Bonapartists
to Napoleon's son Napoleon Francis Joseph Charles Bonaparte,
King of Rome, (1812-1833) who never reigned.

Nicknamed the Little Corporal after forces under his command
forced the Austrian army to retreat at the Battle of Lodi in
1796, Napoléon was a brilliant military strategist, able to
absorb the substantial body of military knowledge of his time
and to apply it to the real-world circumstances of his era. An
artillery officer by training, he used artillery innovatively as
a mobile force to support infantry attacks. When appointed
commander-in-chief of the ill-equipped French army in Italy, he
managed to defeat Austrian forces repeatedly. In these battles,
contemporary paintings of his headquarters show that he used the
world's first telecommunications system, the Chappe semaphore
line, first implemented in 1792. Austrian forces, led by
Archduke Charles, had to negotiate an unfavorable treaty; at the
same time, Napoléon organized a coup in 1797 which removed
several royalists from power in Paris.

Invasion of Egypt, rise to dictatorship
In 1798, the French government, afraid of Bonaparte's
popularity, charged him to invade Egypt in order to undermine
Britain's access to India. An indication of Napoléon's devotion
to the principles of the Enlightenment was his decision to take
scholars along on his expedition: among the other discoveries
that resulted, the Rosetta Stone was translated. He was defeated
by Cezzar Ahmet in Syria near the Castle of Saida. Napoléon's
fleet in Egypt was completely destroyed by Nelson at The Battle
of the Nile, so that Napoléon became land-bound.

A coalition against France formed in Europe, the royalists rose
again, and Napoléon abandoned his troops and returned to Paris
in 1799; in November of that year, a coup d'état made him the
ruler and military dictator ("First Consul") of France.
According to the French Revolutionary Calendar, the date was 18
Brumaire.

Napoléon instituted several lasting reforms in the educational,
judicial, financial and administrational system. His set of
civil laws, the Napoleonic Code or Civil Code, has importance to
this day in many countries. The Code was largely the work of
Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, who held the office Second
Consul under Bonaparte from 1799 to 1804.

Struggle in Europe, rise to emperor
In 1800, Napoléon attacked and defeated Austria again;
afterwards, the British also signed a peace treaty.

In 1802, Napoléon sold a large part of northern America to the
United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase; he had just
faced a major military setback when his army sent to conquer
Santo Domingo and establish a base in the western world was
destroyed by a combination of yellow fever and fierce resistance
led by Toussaint L'Ouverture. With his western forces
diminished, Napoléon knew he would be unable to defend Louisiana
and decided to sell (see Louisiana Purchase).

After Napoléon had enlarged his influence to Switzerland and
Germany, a dispute over Malta provided the pretext for Britain
to declare war on France in 1803 and support French royalists
who opposed Napoléon. Napoléon, however, crowned himself Emperor
on December 2, 1804. Claims that he seized the crown out of the
hands of Pope Pius VII during the ceremony in order to avoid
subjecting himself to the authority of the Pontiff are
apocryphal; after the Imperial regalia had been blessed by the
Pope, Napoléon crowned himself before crowning his wife
Josephine as Empress. Then at Milan's cathedral on May 26, 1805,
Napoléon was crowned King of Italy.

A plan by the French, along with the Spanish, to defeat the
British Royal Navy failed dramatically at the Battle of
Trafalgar (21 October 1805), and Britain gained lasting control
of the seas.

By 1805 the Third Coalition against Napoléon had formed in
Europe; Napoléon attacked and secured a major victory against
Austria and Russia at Austerlitz (2 December 1805) and, in the
following year, humbled Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt
(14 October 1806). As a result, Napoléon became the de facto
ruler over most of Germany. Napoléon marched on through Poland
and then signed a treaty with the Russian tsar Alexander I,
dividing Europe between the two powers. In the French part of
Poland, he established the restored Polish state of Grand Duchy
de Varsovie with the Saxonian King as a ruler.

Then on May 17, 1809 Napoléon ordered the annexation of the
Papal States to the French empire.

Battles in Spain, Austria, and Russia
Napoléon attempted to enforce a Europe-wide commercial boycott
of Britain called the "Continental System". He invaded Spain and
installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as king there. The
Spanish rose in revolt, which Napoléon was unable to suppress.
The British invaded Spain through Portugal in 1808 and, with the
aid of the Spanish nationalists, slowly drove out the French.
While France was engaged in Spain, Austria attacked in Germany,
but after initial success suffered defeat at the Battle of
Wagram (6 July 1809).

Alexander I of Russia had become distrustful of Napoléon and
refused to co-operate with him against the British. Napoleon
invaded Russia in 1812. Napoleon didn't take into account the
advice of Poles, who predicted long-term war instead of quick
victorious campaign. They proposed to gradually retrieve former
Polish areas from the Russian hands and build there the base for
the further war. As Poles predicted, the Russians under Kutuzov
retreated instead of giving battle. Outside of Moscow on 12
September, the Battle of Borodino took place. The Russians
retreated and Napoléon was able to enter Moscow, assuming that
Alexander I would negotiate peace. Moscow began to burn and
within the month, fearing loss of control in France, Napoléon
left Moscow. The French Grand Army suffered greatly in the
course of a ruinous retreat; the Army had begun as over 500,000
men, almost half of it was Polish, but in the end fewer than
10,000 crossed the Berezina River (November 1812) to escape.
Encouraged by this dramatic reversal, several nations again took
up arms against France. The decisive defeat of the French came
at the Battle of Leipzig, also called "The Battle of the
Nations" (October 16-October 19 1813).

Defeat, Exile in Elba, Return and Waterloo
In 1814 Great Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria formed an
alliance against Napoléon. Although the defense of France
included many battles which the French won, the pressure became
overwhelming. Paris was occupied on 31 March 1814. The marshals
asked Napoléon to abdicate, and he did so on April 6 in favor of
his son. The Allies, however demanded unconditional surrender
and Napoléon abdicated again, unconditionally, on April 11. In
the Treaty of Fontainebleau the victors exiled the Corsican to
Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean 20 km off the coast of
Italy. They let him keep the title of "Emperor" but restricted
his empire to that tiny island.

Napoléon tried to poison himself and failed; on the voyage to
Elba he was almost assassinated. In France, the royalists had
taken over and restored King Louis XVIII to power. On Elba,
Napoléon became concerned about his wife and, more especially,
his son, in the hands of the Austrians; the French government
refused to pay his allowance and he heard rumors that he was
about to be banished to a remote island in the Atlantic.
Napoléon escaped from Elba on February 26, 1815 and returned to
the mainland on March 1, 1815. The French armies sent to stop
him received him as leader. He arrived in Paris on March 20 with
a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around
200,000 and governed for the Hundred Days.

Napoléon's final defeat came at the hands of Arthur Wellesley,
1st Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the
Battle of Waterloo in present-day Belgium on 18 June 1815.

Off the port of Rochefort, Napoléon made his formal surrender
while on the HMS Bellerophon, July 15, 1815.

Napoléon's exile to Elba is the inspiration for the famous
palindrome: "Able was I ere I saw Elba."

Exile in Saint Helena and Death
Napoléon was imprisoned and then exiled by the British to the
island of Saint Helena (2,800 km off the Bight of Guinea)
starting on October 15, 1815. There, with a small cadre of
followers, he dictated his memoirs and criticized his captors.
In the last half of April 1821, he wrote out his own will and
several codicils (a total of 40-odd pages) himself. His last
words were: "France, the Army, Joséphine."

In 1955 the diaries of Louis Marchand, Napoleon's valet,
appeared in print. He describes Napoléon in the months leading
up to his death, and led many to conclude that he had been
killed by arsenic poisoning. Arsenic was at the time sometimes
used as an undetectable poison, administered over a long period
of time. In 2001 Pascal Kintz, of the Strasbourg Forensic
Institute in France, added credence to this claim with a study
of arsenic levels found in a lock of Napoleon's hair preserved
after his death, with seven to thirty-eight times normal levels.

Napoléon's tomb in Les Invalides More recent analysis on behalf
of the magazine Science et Vie showed that similar
concentrations of arsenic can be found in Napoléon's hair in
samples taken from 1805, 1814 and 1821. The lead investigator
(Ivan Ricordel, head of toxicology for the Paris Police) stated
that if arsenic was the cause, he should have died years
earlier. Arsenic was also used in some wallpaper, as a green
pigment, and even in some patent medicines, and the group
suggested that the most likely source in this case was a hair
tonic. Prior to the discovery of antibiotics, arsenic was also a
widely used, but ineffective, treatment for syphilis. This has
led to speculation that Napoléon might have suffered from
syphilis.

Napoléon married twice, first to Josephine de Beauharnais (whom
he crowned as Empress Josephine, and by whom he had no heirs,
leading to a divorce) and second to Archduchess Marie Louise of
Austria, who became his second empress. He had one child by
Marie-Louise: Napoléon Francis Joseph Charles Bonaparte
(1812-1833), King of Rome (known as Napoleon II of France
although he never ruled). Napoléon also had at least two
illegitimate children: Charles, Count Léon, (1806 - 1881) (son
of Louise Catherine Eléonore Denuelle de la Plaigne 1787 - 1868)
and Alexandre Joseph Colonna, Count Walewski, (1810 - 1868) (son
of Maria, Countess Walewski 1789 - 1817), who both had
descendants.

THE enduring mystery surrounding the demise of Napoleon
Bonaparte has just been given another twist.

The official verdict, supported by an autopsy, was that he died
of stomach cancer on May 5, 1821, at the age of 51. French
conspiracy theorists suspect he was slowly poisoned with arsenic
by royalist spies.

But, according to New Scientist, all are wrong.

"Medical misadventure" by Napoleon's over-enthusiastic doctors
was to blame, according to forensic pathologist Steven Karch, of
the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Department.

Every day, the doctors gave Napoleon an enema to relieve his
symptoms of a sick stomach and intestinal cramping.

"They used really big, nasty syringe-shaped things," Karch says.

This, combined with regular doses of antimony potassium tartrate
to induce vomiting, would have left him perilously short of
potassium, which can lead to a lethal heart condition in which
the blood flow to the brain is disrupted by irregular
heartbeats.

Karch's theory is that any arsenic in Napoleon's body, which may
have come from smoke or other environmental sources, would have
made him more vulnerable to this condition, but would not on its
own have been lethal.

The final straw would have been a massive 600 milligram dose of
a purgative, mercuric chloride, which would have sent his
potassium levels plummeting. He died two days after this
treatment. - AFP
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,1021578
5%5E663,00.html

Notes

Francis died intestate but the will of his son Robert of
Stafford 1698-1726, mentions his siblings living on 3 Dec 1725,
the date of his will. Robert's brothers were John d 1763;
William d. 1757; Richard (1705-1779) and his Sister, Elizabeth
m. Thos. Stribling d 1765. Robert's will is printed in Essex
Co. Wills pp 155-56.

Their children were:
a. Francis, b 1687; died after 1697.
b. John of the Mount d 1763 married about 1720 to Agatha Hay,
daughter of John Hay and Anne Robinson.
c. Sarah Taliaferro d Feb 1716 married George Mason II 1660-Jan
1716
d. Eiza. Taliaferro d 1765 m Thomas Stribling 1690-1754 of
Prince William Co VA
e. Robert Taliaferro of St. Paul's Parish, Stafford Co VA
1698-1726, unmarried
f. Major William Taliaferro d 1757 married Ann Walker, daughter
of James Walker and Clara Robinson.
g. Richard Taliaferro of Powhatan, James City Co VA 1705-1779
married Elizabeth Eggleston, daughter of Richard Eggleston of
Powhatan.
e. Agatha.
On 5 Sep 1687, Francis and Elizabeth Taliaferro made a deed to
John Battaille for 300 acres of land, reciting that Col. John,
in his last will did bequeath the said land to his two daus.

*** Francis-4 Taliaferro "Of The Mount" was born about 1654. He
died about 1710.
He was married to Elizabeth Catlett. Francis Taliaferro "Of The
Mount" and Elizabeth Catlett had the following children:
i. Agatha-5 Taliaferro.
ii. John-5 Taliaferro "Of The Mount".
iii. Francis-5 Taliaferro was born before 1687.
iv. Zachary-5 (Zacharia) Taliaferro was born in 1687.
v. Robert-5 Taliaferro was born in 1689. He died in 1725/26 in
Saint Paul's Parish, Stafford County, VA.
vi. Richard-5 Taliaferro.
vii. Capt. William-5 Taliaferro.
viii. Elizabeth-5 Taliaferro.
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